We should be suspicious when God's call conforms so neatly to our own inclinations. — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
Nature poets can't walk across the backyard without tripping over an epiphany. — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“For I am come a whirlwind of wasted things and I will ride this tantrum back to God” — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms. — Christian Wiman Faith Copy Share Image
To be truly alive is to feel one's ultimate existence within one's daily existence. — Christian Wiman Alive Copy Share Image
“To have faith in a religion, any religion, is to accept at some primary level that its particular language of words and… — Christian Wiman Faith Copy Share Image
“Faith steals upon you like dew: some days you wake and it is there. And like dew, it gets burned off in… — Christian Wiman Faith Copy Share Image
I think of translations as passing some scholarly smell test: you can read the words of the translation and be reasonably sure… — Christian Wiman Creativity Copy Share Image
I honestly don’t know whether I am describing something essential about the way we know God or merely my own weakness of… — Christian Wiman Belief Copy Share Image
“What song, what home, what calm or one clarity can I not quite come to, never quite see: this field, this sky,… — Christian Wiman Belonging Copy Share Image
“How much of twentieth-century poetry, how much of my own poetry, is the cry of the damned?” — Christian Wiman Damnation Copy Share Image
It's just that different emotions and perceptions demand different frequencies and intensities. — Christian Wiman Demand Copy Share Image
Mandelstam - his gift and the untamable nature of it - was like a thorn in Stalin's brain. — Christian Wiman Brain Copy Share Image
I'm drawn to this range, that's for sure, but I suppose the thing that most appeals to me about Mandelstam is the… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“Herein lies the great difference between divine weakness and human weakness, the wounds of Christ and the wounds of man. Two human… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“part of my enjoyment of life had always been an unconscious assumption of its continuity. Not necessarily a continuity of reality itself—the… — Christian Wiman Life Copy Share Image
What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent… — Christian Wiman Absence Copy Share Image
“Modern spiritual consciousness is predicated upon the fact that God is gone, and spiritual experience, for many of us, amounts mostly to… — Christian Wiman Consciousness Copy Share Image
“Faith cannot save you from the claims of reason, except insofar as it preserves and protects that wonderful, terrible time when reason,… — Christian Wiman Faith Copy Share Image
“The sick person becomes very adept at distinguishing between compassion and pity. Compassion is someone else’s suffering flaring in your own nerves.… — Christian Wiman Compassion Copy Share Image
“The meanings that God calls us to in our lives are never abstract. Though the call may ask us to redefine, or… — Christian Wiman Life Copy Share Image
“And I Said To My Soul, Be Loud Madden me back to an afternoon I carry in me not like a wound… — Christian Wiman Artistry Copy Share Image
Sorrow is so woven through us, so much a part of our souls, or at least any understanding of our souls that… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
“The temptation is to make an idol of our own experience, to assume our pain is more singular than it is. Experience… — Christian Wiman Experience Copy Share Image
The endless, useless urge to look on life comprehensively, to take a bird's-eye view of ourselves and judge the dimensions of what… — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that… — Christian Wiman Ambition Copy Share Image
“When I think of the years when I had no faith, what I am struck by, first of all, is how little… — Christian Wiman Atheism Copy Share Image
“The spiritual efficacy of all encounters is determined by the amount of personal ego that is in play. If two people meet… — Christian Wiman Human love Copy Share Image
I find myself continually falling back into wounds, wishes, terrors I thought I had risen beyond. — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
I don't think that someone who does not speak the original language can ever expect to produce a real translation. — Christian Wiman Copy Share Image
Human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us. — Christian Wiman Creativity Copy Share Image
Mandelstam was an artistic genius, the sort that any century produces only a handful of. — Christian Wiman Art Copy Share Image
